Category: Jeffrey Tucker

Everyone who loves Catholic liturgy is deeply in debt to William Mahrt, president of the CMAA and the godfather of the contemporary revival of chant. It’s perhaps the first time that this has been said outright, but let’s face it: this is what’s true. He brought to the effort an stable temperament, a broadness of mind, a persistence and a willingness to work for unity, an exceptional musical talent, forty years of experience in conducting chant in his own parish, plus a lifetime of original scholarship to support the effort.

Over the years, he has written fantastic articles (some long, some short) in Sacred Music and other places, and together they amount to what is really a manifesto: The Musical Shape of the Liturgy. It could be about 450 pages (my current estimate). It is a very complex typesetting job, with page after page of musical and manuscript examples. It is going to be very expensive in money and time. However, it is worth it. We need this book. Yes, the articles are available here and there, but the book is the key.

We are moving fast on this and hope to have it out in January or thereabouts. Just so that we are clear: Mahrt is a musicologist with an international reputation. But he is also more than a scholar; he is a practitioner and advocate. He gives voice to what many of us can only intuit, and brings an intellectual weight to the cause that is unmatched. This book will make a critical difference going forward, entrenching the accomplishments so far and preparing the way for a bright future for Catholic music.

If you can help, please consider a contribution. There are two ways. There is the traditional way using the widget below (your contribution is tax deductible). There is also another way: help with extracting texts from PDF scans. This is technical work and a bit tricky but it is essential. If you are interesting in doing this, see this thread on the MusicaSacra.com forum.

Here is the full Table of Contents.

The demand was so high at the Colloquium that I wasn’t able to buy a Simple Choral Gradual, by Richard Rice. I ordered it and today it arrived!

The Simple English Propers is back in stock. Amazon should just order 100,000 and be done with this silliness.

Pointed from PrayTell, Commonweal offers the following when comparing the old and new translations of the Missal:

The current translation is simple and direct. It follows the speech patterns and rhythms of contemporary spoken English. It flows easily off the tongue. Its meaning is clear. The new translation, on the other hand, is mannered and complex. … Overall, the length of the sentences in the new translation is staggering. The longest sentence of the Eucharistic Prayers has 82 words, the second longest, 72. All but one of the sentences in Eucharistic Prayer I are more than 40 words long.

Remarkably, the writer reports all of this to make a case against the new translation, with the general claim (hyperbolic rendering follows) that Vatican II surely intended to subject the liturgy to Strunk and White standards of editing (“Use active voice”; “put statements in postive form”; “omit needless words”; “avoid a succession of loose sentences”; “keep related words together”) without seeming to realize that all of these S&W standards apply to journalism and popular writing, not sacral language.

In any case, as with the case of music, I don’t see much point in arguing about all of this; the proof will come in the hearing and the effect on worship begin in Advent. It will be a new and glorious day for the ordinary form of the Roman Rite. 

One need only compare (randomly) this coming Sunday’s collect for the 14th Sunday of the Year:

OLD
Father, through the obedience of Jesus,
your servant and your Son,
you raised a fallen world.
Free us from sin
and bring us the joy that lasts forever.

NEW:
O God, who in the abasement of your Son
have raised up a fallen world,
fill your faithful with holy joy,
for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin
you bestow eternal gladness.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ..

 Simple question: which most sounds like Church?

It’s so thrilling to see new efforts to educate and spread sacred music through careful instruction from the ground up. This appears to be the mission of the new Institute of Liturgical Music, Birmingham Oratory. For far too long, people with talents and skills in this area have been required to be content with cultivating their own gardens in their parishes and cathedrals. Now the opportunity presents itself to spread the beauty to every parish, and this is precisely what we should be doing.

Yesterday’s posting of the Willan introit inspired a number of emails about Willan’s life and work. He was born October 12, 1880 in Balham, London, immigrated to Canada in 1913, and died February 16, 1968. He composed more than 800 works including operas, symphonies, chamber music, a concerto, and pieces for band, orchestra, organ, and piano. His music for liturgy is his most lasting contribution – mostly composed for the high Anglican context. He was certainly the great master at setting English text to liturgical music, so his work should by wholly embraced by Catholics today.

(Again, hardly a day goes by when I do not stammer with shock at the realization that the Catholic Church vernacularized in 1963-65, and, after nearly half a century is only just now finding its liturgical voice in English. Part of the reason for this terrible situation has been an entrenched bias against anything that would seem to borrow from the experience, texts, and sounds of the Anglican faith. Because of that cultural bias, Catholics have been trying to reinvent the wheel and do their best to make it completely different from all all wheels in the world. It is an understatement to say that this approach hasn’t worked. Fortunately, this bias seems to be less relevant today.)

Willan offers a huge library of music that would be easily adapted to Catholic use right now. His Graduals and Introits that I linked are only a tiny portion. He wrote many Masses, motets, and propers for the liturgy.

Consider these two Missa Brevis.You will instantly see what I mean.

There is a problem, however. Willan falls into the generation of composers that is recently seen by scholars as nearly lost to intellectual property legislation of the 20th century (one of the great legal errors of human history, as regards music). His publications might be trapped by the legal ambiguity of copyright in those years. This has happened to many composers in the 20th century, and rather than investigate the details, pay the estates, do the contracts, and bear the legal liabilities, it is just to easy to move to other things. No one wants to see their work go away but in the cost-benefit calculus, it is too easy just to let it all languish and disappear, which is precisely what has happened to legions of 20th century composers. 

Fortunately, we now have online access to copyright renewal databases that provided an accurate listing of all works renewed and hence still under protection. Even better is that those databases reveal that nothing of Willan’s work was ever renewed, which means that if it was published in the U.S. in 1963 or before, it is now in the public domain. This is the case for the introits I linked yesterday. It might be the case for these Masses too. This is certainly something that people should look into, because there is real treasure here, and it awaits being made a living presence in Catholic liturgy today.